Social Life in the Insect World eBook

CHAPTER X

THE FIELD-CRICKET

The breeding of Crickets demands no particular preparations.
A little patience is enough—­patience, which
according to Buffon is genius; but which I, more modestly,
will call the superlative virtue of the observer.
In April, May, or later we may establish isolated couples
in ordinary flower-pots containing a layer of beaten
earth. Their diet will consist of a leaf of lettuce
renewed from time to time. The pot must be covered
with a square of glass to prevent the escape of the
inmates.

I have gathered some very curious data from these
makeshift appliances, which may be used with and as
a substitute for the cages of wire gauze, although
the latter are preferable. We shall return to
the point presently. For the moment let us watch
the process of breeding, taking care that the critical
hour does not escape us.

It was during the first week of June that my assiduous
visits were at last repaid. I surprised the female
motionless, with the oviduct planted vertically in
the soil. Heedless of the indiscreet visitor,
she remained for a long time stationed at the same
point. Finally she withdrew her oviduct, and
effaced, though without particular care, the traces
of the hole in which her eggs were deposited, rested
for a moment, walked away, and repeated the operation;
not once, but many times, first here, then there,
all over the area at her disposal. Her behaviour
was precisely the same as that of the Decticus, except
that her movements were more deliberate. At the
end of twenty-four hours her eggs were apparently
all laid. For greater certainty I waited a couple
of days longer.

I then examined the earth in the pot. The eggs,
of a straw-yellow, are cylindrical in form, with rounded
ends, and measure about one-tenth of an inch in length.
They are placed singly in the soil, in a perpendicular
position.

I have found them over the whole area of the pot,
at a depth of a twelfth of an inch. As closely
as the difficulties of the operation will allow, I
have estimated the eggs of a single female, upon passing
the earth through a sieve, at five or six hundred.
Such a family will certainly undergo an energetic
pruning before very long.

The egg of the Cricket is a curiosity, a tiny mechanical
marvel. After hatching it appears as a sheath
of opaque white, open at the summit, where there is
a round and very regular aperture, to the edge of which
adheres a little valve like a skull-cap which forms
the lid. Instead of breaking at random under
the thrusts or the cuts of the new-formed larva, it
opens of itself along a line of least resistance which
occurs expressly for the purpose. The curious
process of the actual hatching should be observed.

A fortnight after the egg is laid two large eye-marks,
round and of a reddish black, are seen to darken the
forward extremity of the egg. Next, a little
above these two points, and right at the end of the
cylinder, a tiny circular capsule or swelling is seen.
This marks the line of rupture, which is now preparing.
Presently the translucency of the egg allows us to
observe the fine segmentation of the tiny inmate.
Now is the moment to redouble our vigilance and to
multiply our visits, especially during the earlier
part of the day.